University of Kentucky UKnowledge Literature in English, Australia English Language and Literature 1983 Laden Choirs: The Fiction of Patrick White Peter Wolfe University of Missouri - St Louis Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Wolfe, Peter, "Laden Choirs: The Fiction of Patrick White" (1983). Literature in English, Australia. 1. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_australia/1 LADEN CHOIRS This page intentionally left blank LADEN CHOIRS The Fiction of PATRICK WHITE Peter Wolfe THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Copyright© 1983 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine College, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky Umversity, The Filson Club, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. Editorial and Sales Offices: Lexington, Kentucky 40506-0024 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Wolfe, Peter, 1933- Laden choirs. Includes index. 1. White, Patrick, 1912- -Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. PR9619.3.W5Z95 1983 823 83-6831 ISBN: 978-0-8131-5549-4 Contents Acknowledgments vn 1. The Art of the Copious 1 2. Groping in the Barrens 34 3. Silhouettes on a Glass Box 50 4. Pieces of Self 66 5. Strange Truths along Well-Trod Byways 86 6. The Immensity That Enfolds 104 7. The Sowing of the Seed 124 8. Deeper than Blood 140 9. Knives of Light 155 10. Jaws 175 11. Castaways 197 12. Ways of Escape 215 Conclusion: Courting the Ineffable 230 Notes 233 Index 240 To Marla Schorr, the Newby with the copper eyes, and her blacklipped chum, Captain Prewash Aclznowledgments THE AUTHOR and publisher join in expressing their thanks for permission to quote copyrighted passages to the following: from The Aunt's Story, The Burnt Ones, The Eye of the Storm, Flaws in the Glass, A Fringe of Leaves, The Living and the Dead, Riders in the Chariot, The Solid Man­ dala, The Tree ofMan, The Twyborn Affair, The Vivisector, and Voss, by permission of Patrick White, Curtis Brown (Australia), Ltd., Jonathan Cape, Ltd., and Viking Penguin, Inc.; from Happy Valley, by permission of Patrick White. The time and energy of a number of people went into the preparation of this book. Special thanks are owed to Alan Lawson for his kind help with bibliographical problems; to Roland Champagne and Howard Schwartz for supplying rich background data; to Theresa Smythe for typing and proofreading the manuscript; and to the University of Mis­ souri-St. Louis Graduate College for grants to cover expenses connected with researching the manuscript. The combined help of the following people amounts to a major con­ tribution: Jane Novak, Norman Simms, Buster Fulbright, Emil Sitka, Dennis Trent, Elmer Crow, Philip Wolfe, Jack Lowe, Gordon W. Jacob­ son, and Graham Pascoe. A NoTE To THE READER: All quotations from White's work are taken from the following editions; instances where an edition doesn't correspond to a work's first printing will be noted in the text: The Aunt's Story. New York: Viking Press, 1948. The Burnt Ones. New York: Viking Press, 1964. The Cockatoos. New York: Viking Press, 1975. The Eye ofthe Storm. New York: Viking Press, 1974. Flaws in the Glass. New York: Viking Press, 1982. A Fringe of Leaves. New York: Viking Press, 1977. Four Plays. New York: Viking Press, 1966. Happy Valley. London: Harrap, 1939. The Living and the Dead. 1941; rpt., Middlesex: Penguin, 1967. Riders in the Chariot. New York: Viking Press, 1961. The Solid Mandala. New York: Viking Press, 1966. The Tree of Man. New York: Viking Press, 1955. The Twyborn Affair. New York: Viking Press, 1980. The Vivisector. New York: Viking Press, 1970. Voss. New York: Viking Press, 1957. 1. The Art of the Copious READERS HAVE started to feel that Patrick White is a good writer because he is Patrick White; they can admire one of his novels because if it weren't good he wouldn't have written it. They needn't look far to justify their admiration. White has the abundance of a major author who doesn't limit himself to one kind of book or restrict his range of experience. Although The Tree of Man (1955), Voss (1957), and A Fringe of Leaves (1976) convey the power and immensity of the wilderness, the setting of a White novel can also be urban. When he isn't returning to Australia's pioneer past, he will respond to our technological, pluralist society. That society needn't be Australian; parts of his best work take place in England, France, Germany, and Greece. Yet these locales are almost always seen through Australian eyes. Members of both the Australian colonial aristocracy and working class appear in all but one of his books, each of which gives a map of Australian society. Besides writing about artists and artisans, he portrays librarians, prostitutes, and soldiers. In The Tree ofMan, Riders in the Chariot (1961), The Vivisector (1970), and The Eye of the Storm (1973), several important characters work in the homes of the rich. Despite his awareness of social mobility in the industrial state, White rarely tries his hand at journalistic realism or institutional criticism. No social historian he. He doesn't show the expansion of cities and the growth of railways in Australia, nor does he chart the corresponding decline of sheep and cattle raising, gold mining, and grain growing. White offers visions, not programs. Grand in conception and strong in execution, his novels convey a fullness of statement, giving the impression that every­ thing important about a subject has been said. This Victorian finality bypasses moral judgment. White belongs in the Flaubertian tradition of 2 LADEN CHOIRS the writer who disavows literature as a practical guide. No teacher or prosecuting attorney, he doesn't want to lecture or to foment social and political activity. Instead, he has carved out a system of deep-running continuities by which we may be enriched. The process of enrichment isn't always smooth; some of the action he describes is brutal, and some of his insights make us wince. He would rather provoke than amuse. Perhaps he provokes to excess. If entertainment stresses complexity of plot and ser­ ious fiction dwells on complexity of character, his delvings and nuances reveal a jut-jawed rejection of the literary entertainer's role. He has wid­ ened the unfortunate twentieth-century split between serious art and popular entertainment. His books, with their epigraphs and learned allu­ sions, their foreign words and carefully honed ironies, display formal splendor and linguistic cunning. They explore meaning itself, rather than developing meaning through action, with most of what goes on happening inside the characters' heads. White's slow-paced intensity builds from a relentless, probing tech­ nique. No literary playboy, he takes his work seriously. Indeed, his recent practice of beginning his novels with three or four epigraphs smacks of piety and uplift. The epigraphs add to the pored-over literary climate. They state truths that the novel will explain, and besides serving as advance notices of White's beliefs, they also prefigure his practice (another legacy of the J oycean school of fiction writing) of killing several meanings at once. The centrality of artists in Tree, Riders, and Vivisector implies a unity of impulse that a survey of motifs from his canon supports. Though different, the novels all depend on each other. White sees life in the round, yoking the depth and mystery of the human soul to the slapstick of everyday existence. Often attacked for his plodding seriousness, he enjoys verbal clowning as much as did his early mentor, James Joyce. Voss includes a midwife named Mrs. Child, a Dr. Kilwinning who is notorious for charging high fees, and a Mr. Plumpton, "whose name did not fit his form" (p. 231). Again tuning his skills to a Joycean key, White displays his anti-authoritarianism by giving a brothel-going policeman in Riders the name McFaggott. This verbal fun can convey respect and admiration as well as disdain; a saintly nurse in Eye is called Mary de Santis. White's clowning freshens his perspective. If he failed to present the funny side of his characters, he would be giving a foreshortened picture. We are all laughable at times. In 1969 he discussed his art as a striving toward wholeness, to which humor is essential: "I have the same idea with all my books: an attempt to come closer to the core of reality, the structure of reality, as opposed to the merely superficial .... A novel should heighten life, should give an illuminating experience."1 To disclose a deeper, more vital side of a person, White bypasses convention, social duty, and the dead shell of inhibition. "One of the things White often does well ... is to make us feel the significant weight of minutiae,"2 said Peter Shrubb of his The Art of the Copious 3 instinct for the telling touch. White studies the pores of his characters' skin, the roots of their hair, and the fillings in their teeth. This scrutiny also serves wholeness. Without downgrading their thoughts, memories, and fantasies, he keeps reminding us of their physicality. Stubborn reality can intrude upon a character at any time, deflating long-windedness and thus preserving moral balance.